Week 3 Training Summary

Week 3 of 10

I'm still on-board with the McMillan half-marathon training program! Barely. This week was not exactly a full success, but I did finish week 3. Each of the week's runs was supposed to be extended just a bit and a little more speed was incorporated. The standard weekly structure remained the same: M-W-F are rest days, Tuesday is easy (with a touch of speed), Thursday is a real speed workout, Saturday is easy, and Sunday is the long run. I only did three of the four runs this week and ended up with 25 miles and 3 hours, 40 minutes of training.

Monday: Rest day. Very much appreciated. My long run Sunday felt good, but I wasn't up for a Monday workout. Guess that's why this is a designated off day.

Tuesday: Did a 65-minute easy run. It was supposed to be 80 minutes with the last 20 at half-marathon race pace. Nope. Tuesday easy runs have been 40-50 minutes so this was a good increase, but it was not the full 80 minutes. And it wasn't fast. Felt tired. Did Sunday's run drain me that much?

Wednesday: Off. Again, I enjoyed this day of rest. No cross training.

Thursday: Schedule called for 5 x 1-mile repeats (at about 10K race pace) with 3-minute rest intervals. I did 4 x 7-minute hard (almost a mile) with 3 minutes rest. It was pretty intense. And extremely humid.

Friday: Rest! Yeah. Was tired from Thursday speed session. Needed the break.

Saturday: Supposed to be an easy 40 minute run. I was still tired from the speed session and a couple of tough days at work. Mowed the lawn and called it quits. No run. Hoping I would be extra rested for the Sunday long run.

Sunday: Long run for the week. Schedule said 1:30-1:45 and I ran 1:35! Solid effort. And it was fast. Or at least steady and strong. 8:56/mile average with a negative split in very humid conditions on the trails. Felt good. I think the extra day off (yesterday) was worthwhile. Maybe I just do three good runs per week and skip the fourth easy run? I'm still learning.